Visually arresting example of this 16th century attempt to record the purely oral traditions of vernacular Christmas and Advent music in a small town in provincial Normandy (Verneuil-sur-Avre). “Most of these spiritual songs, still touching and naive, often inconsequential, have not been passed down to us; oblivion was to erase, in their simplicity and grace, these humble productions of a popular genre, often confined solely to the memory of those who repeated them from generation to generation…” (Allard). According to the Grove Dictionary of Music, “no 17th century printed collections [of Noëls] survive with notated music, although a few manuscript sources include melodies”. The musical notations recorded in the present document suggest a sort of plainchant inflected with vernacularisms; even more astonishing are the elaborate painted designs adorning almost every page, apparently the work of “Pierre Fleuri Broudeur [embroiderer]” but certainly modelled on imagined 14th century motifs. Each page is breathtaking, and in Fleuri’s designs we see glimmers of daily life: revelers dancing, playing the guitar or flute, and drinking red wine. The main text of the manuscript cannot date to later than 1613, as one of the Noels (f 28r) refers to the “vivant” Jacques de Godebille (d. 1613) as its compositor. Several Noels (eg #61) mention “cette présente année 1596”; and interestingly, the scribe often distinguishes between a ‘Noel ancient’ and a ‘Noel nouveau’.
The format of the binding leads to speculation that the volume was presented as a wedding-gift; and on f 13r (i.e. the first Noel of the original scribe), we find the signature “Faict par lest mayins de Pierre Fleuri Broudeur”. Whatever the context of its creation, the scribe evidently saw his remit as to collect oral traditions, committing these songs and musical notations to paper in order to preserve them for posterity. Along the way, he seems to have taken particular delight in imitating the sorts of fantastical illuminations sometimes found in medieval codices before the 15th century – employing brown, green, yellow, pink, mauve and red, into his elaborate, usually figurative initials incorporating foliage, flowers, interlace, grotesques, humanoid figures, fantastic beasts, animals, and so on. On f. 52v we find a large coloured drawing depicting two boys or young men carrying armorial shields (see more below).
The earliest section of the manuscript begins at f. 12 (lettered ‘a’ in the upper margin, signifying the first original bifolium) and ends at f. 167 (verso inscribed ‘Amen finis coronat opus’, surrounded by four ‘S fermés’). About a dozen leaves were added to each end of the manuscript shortly afterwards (or were originally present but blank) and the volume foliated to 180. Further Noëls were written on these leaves, some by the scribe of the original sequence but most by a different hand, each introduced by an elaborate initial in pen and grey wash or in pen alone. The original sequence of noëls includes nine which bear dates. The earliest is 1566 (f. 114, ‘Noel nouveau de la nativité n[ost]re seigneur composee en lannee 1566 par Robert Godebille & se chante en deux partis sur un chant nouveau’), and two others bear the dates 1580 and 1581 (f. 59, ‘Chanson spirituelle a la louange de la nativité n[ot]re seigneur composee par Maistre Guillaume le guey en lannee 1580’, and f. 156, ‘Noel nouveau en forme de chant Royal compose par Mr Jacques Godebille sur le chant de noel son Petit Frac faicte en l’annee 1581). One noël is dated 1596 and six 1597, the context of the former (‘composé par Mr Maximin d’eschesnes … en ceste p[rese]nte annee … 1596’, f. 161r ) and the sequence of the latter perhaps suggesting 1596–7 as the date of compilation for the manuscript itself. Two of the added noëls are dated 1608 and 1609 (f. 171 and f. 169), indicating that this sequence was appended a dozen or so years later.
The manuscript is securely localizable to the town of Verneuil-sur-Avre in Upper Normandy. One of the noëls begins ‘Mes bourgeois de Verneuil … ’ (f. 126r ) and another includes a reference to the ‘bourgeois de Verneuil’ (f. 94r ). Three of the noëls were written by Jacques Godebille (1545–1613), described above one of them as ‘vivant cur[é] de la mag[delai]ne de Verneuil’ (f. 28r ), and the ‘Maximin d’eschesnes’ mentioned above was ‘curé de St laurens de ceste ville de Verneuil’ (f. 161r ). Four further noëls were written by Guillame Le Guey (or Le Gay), described on f. 56r as ‘Vicaire de Baslines’ (i.e. the nearby village of Bâlines). At the end of the first noël in the original sequence (f. 13r ) is the inscription, following the word ‘finis’ and written in red ink, ‘Faict par lest [sic] mayins [i.e. mains] de Pierre Fleuri Broudeur’, in other words ‘Done by the hands of Pierre Fleuri embroiderer’.
Noëls have long occupied a special place in French musical and religious life. “In his Recherches de la France (Paris, 1571), Etienne Pasquier described noëls as “chansons spirituelles faictes en l’honneur de nostre Seigneur”; he explained that in his youth it was customary for every family to sing them each evening but that the tradition survived only at Christmas eve, when children and adults sang them in the streets and in church during the offertory at Midnight Mass. They had figured in the Mass at Christmas since the late 12th century; during the 16th century polyphonic Christmas motets were composed for the professional choirs of the larger churches and courts . . . . Vernacular noëls also figure occasionally in collections of polyphonic chansons (e.g. Costeley’s five-voice Or est venu Noé, 1570) and airs (e.g. Pierre Bonnet’s eight-voice Nouel en dialogue beginning “Bergers je vous fay scavoir”, 1585); Du Caurroy’sMeslanges, published posthumously in 1610, includes fifteen noëls for four or five voices. Inexpensive editions of popular anthologies of anonymous noël texts, with suggested timbres, continued to proliferate throughout the 17th and 18th centuries . . . . No 17th-century printed collections survive with notated music, although a few manuscript sources include melodies” (Grove online).
Condition: neat repairs to outer margins of approximately 20 leaves (five just touching coloured initials) and to extreme outer corners of a few leaves, neatly repaired tear in one leaf (f. 177, without loss), small closed tear in another leaf (f. 138, rather crudely repaired but without loss), a few small holes resulting from ink erosion, small nineteenth-century paper tabs attached to upper margins of several leaves, piece of notepaper attached to upper margin of f. 27v bearing a note in French in a nineteenth-century hand; extremities rubbed, neat old repairs to head and foot of spine, fillets regilded, endpapers renewed.
Provenance:
1. Michel du Four and Marie Poullain (contemporary gilt lettering on covers), conceivably a marriage gift. One of the two coats of arms on f. 52v (argent, a chevron gules accompanied by three roses of the same, on chief a winged cherub’s head) does appear to derive from that of the Du Four family of Normandy (see Jougla de Morenas, Grand armorial de France nos. 16009 and 16011). We have not been able to identify the other coat of arms but it seems likely that it is that of Marie Poullain (or Poulain). The winged cherub’s head of the Du Four arms reappears in the initial on f. 99, and both coats of arms appear in the initial on f. 100r (on a pedestal supporting a naked woman playing the cornet), the Du Four arms flanked there by the monograms ‘PF’ (for Pierre Fleuri?) and ‘BV’ (these four letters appear again as a single monogram within the initial on f. 166r). The mysterious monogram ‘PALI’ appears within the initial on f. 45r;
2. Ernest-Gabriel, marquis des Roys (1836–1903);
3. Latterly in a German private collection;
4. Bernard Quaritch Ltd., London.
The present manuscript was noted and almost fully transcribed in 1895 by a local Norman historian, Christophe Allard, while still in the private collection noted above. Allard made no attempt to reproduce the illustrations, and largely dismissed them as “plus bizarres que jolies”; it is also worth noting that the 8 folios enumerated above were already missing when Allard described the manuscript.
cf Allard, Noëls Normands publiés avec musique gravée; introduction et notes d’après deux manuscrits appartenant à M. le Marquis des Roys, Rouen, Imprimerie Gagniard, 1895.
